Monday, 15 February 2016

Hunger is a social evil. It
may not necessarily force someone to do something evil, but it will definitely
not allow him to concentrate on the task at hand, and concentration, as we all
know, is of immense importance when the task at hand is ‘learning’. So how do
children cope with this evil? It will be naïve to think they do.

If a child skips his breakfast,
he will not be able to concentrate on learning because of hunger, and as a
result, his performance will go down. Now skipping the breakfast or any meal is
one thing; not affording one is another. Children from poor families fall into
the latter category. They can’t even afford a meal at times, leave alone a
nutritious meal. How then, will they concentrate on educational activities?

Iodine deficiency alone can
result in reduced cognitive functions; imagine the damage hunger can do to a
child’s learning abilities.

It’s also important to understand
that under-nutrition doesn’t just affect the child’s health but also
jeopardizes his future. A poor diet in childhood results in below par
performance in academics, which, in turn, results in fewer job opportunities. As
a result, he is not able to achieve much professionally and his children are also
subjected to a poor diet, starting the vicious cycle all over again.

In order to address hunger
and problems related to it—in the education sector in particular, we need
concrete solutions. The Government of India has identified the problem and implemented
the Mid-day
Meal Scheme (MDMS), a school lunch programme, to tackle it. That it is widely considered
one of the best school feeding programmes in the world shouldn’t come as a
surprise as it reaches out to over 120 million children.

As the mid-day meal
programme intends to improve the nutritional status of children, strict
nutritional guidelines have been laid with respect to its implementation. While
students from class I to V are entitled to receive 450 calories and 12 gm
protein from their meal, children from class VI to VIII are entitled to receive
700 calories and 20 gm protein.

School feeding programmes don’t
just help in improving the nutritional health of children but also provide an
incentive for them to come to school and more importantly, for the parents to
send their children to school.

The mid-day lunch provided in
schools is also important because at times, this is the only meal these
children have throughout the day. The MDMS covers government and
government-aided schools. Many children studying in these schools come from
families who can’t afford a nutritious meal. For these children, the school lunch programme comes as a blessing in
disguise.

Additionally, it helps in
improving enrolment in schools and reducing the drop-out rate, as many people,
who would otherwise force their children to leave school and work to support the
family, allow them to continue studying. Even those who force their girl child
to drop out of school and work in kitchen as they believe it will help them after
marriage, are now allowing them to continue schooling.

Then there are the positive
effects on attendance. It is highly unlikely that a healthy child will miss the
school because of illness. In contrast, a malnourished child is more likely to
be absent on regular basis because of some underlying health condition.

There is no dearth of independent studies supporting the fact that the MDMS has been successful in providing necessary nutrition to children, reducing drop-out rate, improved attendance, and more importantly, helped children excel in school. The need of the hour therefore, is to work on reaching every corner of the country to ensure that no child goes to bed hungry or misses out on education because of hunger.